HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Walker Hamilton (born 1934 in
Airdrie, North Lanarkshire Airdrie (; ; ) is a town in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It lies on a plateau 400 ft (130 m) above sea level, 12 miles (19 km) east of Glasgow. , it had a population of 37,130. Airdrie developed as a market town in the late 17th ce ...
; died February 1969) was a Scottish writer known for the 1968 novella ''
All the Little Animals ''All the Little Animals'' is a 1998 drama film directed and produced by Jeremy Thomas and starring Christian Bale and John Hurt. Based on the 1968 novella of the same name by Walker Hamilton, it was adapted for the screen by Eski Thomas. Th ...
''. He was the son of a coal-miner who left school at fifteen to do
National Service National service is a system of compulsory or voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act ...
, which did not last long due to poor health. In 1960, he married Dorothy and moved to a cottage in
Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...
. He died of a heart attack nine years later. ''All the Little Animals'' is a dark and hard to categorise story about a mentally disabled 31-year-old man-child who runs away from his abusive stepfather and strikes up an unlikely friendship with a strange old man who buries
roadkill Roadkill is a wild animal that has been killed by collision with motor vehicles. Wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVC) have increasingly been the topic of academic research to understand the causes, and how they can be mitigated. History Essenti ...
he finds in the Cornish country lanes. Hamilton also wrote '' A Dragon's Life'' about an out-of-work actor on the run, searching for himself while wearing a dragon costume, published posthumously in 1970. The original edition's blurb announced that: "''A Dragon's Life'' is as unclassifiable a novel as was ''All the Little Animals'', and is likely to be as successful. It is sad to know that there will be no further novels from Walker Hamilton's pen, as he died within days of completing this novel at the age of thirty-five." In 1998, ''
All the Little Animals ''All the Little Animals'' is a 1998 drama film directed and produced by Jeremy Thomas and starring Christian Bale and John Hurt. Based on the 1968 novella of the same name by Walker Hamilton, it was adapted for the screen by Eski Thomas. Th ...
'' was adapted for film, starring
John Hurt Sir John Vincent Hurt (22 January 1940 – 28 January 2017) was an English actor. Regarded as one of the finest actors of his time and known for the "most distinctive voice in Cinema of the United Kingdom, Britain", he was described by David Ly ...
and
Christian Bale Christian Charles Philip Bale (born 30 January 1974) is an English actor. Known for his versatility and physical transformations for his roles, he has been a leading man in films of several genres. List of awards and nominations received by C ...
and directed by
Jeremy Thomas Jeremy Jack Thomas (born 26 July 1949) is a British film producer. He is the founder and chairman of Recorded Picture Company. He produced Bernardo Bertolucci's '' The Last Emperor'', which won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Picture. In 20 ...
,. Despite the film reaching out to a wider audience, The Scottish Review of Books points out that "the author and his books have been woefully neglected." As Alan Warner states in his indignant introduction o the Freight Books 2012 edition "The novel remains unmentioned in all the current literary ‘histories’, demonstrating that familiar and destructive inaccuracy as canons are simply engineered from the canons which came before them, rather than from wider reading".''The Scottish Review of Books''
/ref>


References

1934 births 1969 deaths 20th-century Scottish novelists People from Airdrie, North Lanarkshire Scottish novelists {{Scotland-writer-stub